


The beautiful mess

by Estelle (Fielding)



Series: B99 Season 7 Countdown Project [19]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Episode: s04e11 The Fugitive, F/M, Missing Scene, domestic peraltiago
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-19 16:54:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22314256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fielding/pseuds/Estelle
Summary: “I spilled ranch dressing all over the drawer. What's so hard to understand about this, guys?”The quote kind of speaks for itself: This is the story of Jake spilling ranch into his drawer at Amy’s place. Takes place during The Fugitive.
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Series: B99 Season 7 Countdown Project [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1588849
Comments: 17
Kudos: 81





	The beautiful mess

**Author's Note:**

> Story No. 19 of my Season 7 Countdown Project. Thank you to @theoneintheblue for the prompt!!

When Amy gets out of the bathroom after her shower she fully expects Jake to be out cold still, starfished across the bed. He tends to spread out when she gets up first (which is of course almost always), often arranging himself diagonally so he takes up all four corners of the mattress. She can read his behavior one of two ways: Either he misses her and is seeking her out in his slumber, or he is a not-so-secret bed hog who kindly controls himself when they sleep together. She figures both options are sweet, so all in all: Starfish Jake is Adorable Jake.

But right now he isn’t starfished, or even in bed at all. He’s standing with his back to her at her dresser, the top drawer pulled all the way open. He’s wearing only his boxers, and his hair is a wild mess, and she can tell by the tension in his arms and shoulders that he’s holding something heavy.

Amy’s not actually all that suspicious by nature, but something about the scene makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

She crosses the room and Jake turns slightly toward her and that’s when she sees: He has a Costco jug of ranch in one hand and a travel-sized squeeze-bottle in the other.

“Morning!” Jake says, chipper like it’s totally normal for him to be awake at – she glances at her alarm clock – 7:36 a.m. on a Tuesday, holding about a gallon of ranch over her underwear drawer.

“Babe, what are you doing?” Amy says, slowly so as not to startle him.

“Oh, this?” he says, jerking the ranch jug with much more force than Amy would prefer.

“Yeah, that.”

“I used up the last of my travel-ranch on that stakeout with Charles last week so I need to fill up a new bottle,” Jake says.

“Are you going on another stakeout?” Amy says.

“Maybe!” Jake says. “You never do know.”

“Hm,” Amy says. “And you’re doing this in the bedroom and not the kitchen because-?”

“The travel-ranch bottle was in my work bag and my work bag is in here,” Jake says. “And before you ask, I’m working over your underwear drawer so I don’t spill any on the floor.”

He gives her the look that says “aren’t I the best boyfriend?” and Amy feels a thrill of triumph at the fact that she doesn’t roll her eyes. 

“I see,” Amy says.

She sighs and walks over to him, and she watches Jake as he brings the jug and the travel bottle up to eye level and squints at them. The Costco bottle has a huge opening, probably six inches across, and the travel bottle is tiny; her thumb would probably get stuck. Jake starts to tip the jug. 

Amy could stop this now. She  _ should  _ stop this now. Instead, she nudges her underwear drawer closed with her hip, then opens the drawer beneath it – Jake’s drawer.

Then she kisses him briefly on the cheek and goes back to the bathroom to finish putting on her makeup.

+++

She gave Jake a drawer at her apartment something like a month into their dating. The thing with Jake is, he’s always spilling things on his clothes. At the precinct he has an entire drawer in his file cabinet filled with spare shirts, plus ties, socks, and underwear, everything sorted into folders marked “clean” and “dirty.”

(She asked him once, many years ago, why he kept dirty clothes at work instead of taking them home to, you know, wash. He just grinned and shrugged and mumbled something that Amy has since interpreted as “I don’t know” because she’s heard it about a thousand times.

Anyway, all that was before she found that kind of behavior oddly endearing.)

So it only made sense that he have a drawer with (clean) spare clothes at her place, since he spilled things on himself there as much as anywhere. In fact, she’d suggested it after their fifth official date when he had managed to spill an entire bottle of soy sauce down his shirt, drenching his tie, his plaid shirt and his undershirt. It was the fourth time he’d stained some item of clothing on a date with her.

When Amy had handed him a gray T-shirt (“Do you even lift, bro?” in all caps across the front – it had belonged to one of her brothers) to change into, she’d said, “You should just keep a stash here.”

Jake’s head had popped through the worn neck of the shirt and he’d stared at her for a moment before saying, “Like, just keep some clothes here? All the time?”

“Sure,” Amy said. “I’ll make room in a drawer.”

Jake’s face had lit up, and Amy had instantly realized the significance of what she’d offered. Jake pulled the shirt down over his stomach and reached for her, wrapping his arms around her waist.

“My own drawer,” he’d said.

“I didn’t say a whole drawer,” Amy had said, and smiled when he kissed her.

+++

Of course, he did get a whole drawer. And Amy hears from the bathroom the instant that the ranch gets in it.

“Holy mother of- Ames!”

Amy’s only managed to apply some mascara. She rolls her eyes and stashes her makeup bag back into the bathroom closet.

She expects a spill. She does not expect the ranch moat she finds in his drawer. His shirts and ties and socks and underwear are drowning in ranch. One sock is literally floating.

“How-”

“I don’t know!” Jake says. He has ranch in his hair and his hands are covered in it. He’s still holding the jug and it is empty. The travel bottle is also empty.

“You dumped a gallon of ranch into your drawer,” Amy says, matter of fact.

Then she laughs. Hard. She looks into his drawer again and watches the one sock slowly sink beneath the creamy white surface, and then she really loses it. She’s laughing so hard that she’s crying as she heads back to the bathroom to retrieve his towel, and she’s still laughing when she drapes it over the top of his head and carefully takes the two empty bottles out of his hands.

“You can borrow my Lilith Fair T-shirt,” Amy calls from the doorway, trying to catch her breath. It’s the only clean shirt she has that will fit him (she was 16 and all of her clothes were oversized grunge-wear that summer – it was A Look). “Just make sure you shower first.”

Five minutes later, Jake does not find it nearly as hilarious as Amy does when she dumps the contents of his drawer – shirts, ties, socks, underwear and a gallon of ranch – into the shower with him.

**Author's Note:**

> *Title is from Feed the Beast (Bash Brothers).
> 
> *This was such an amazing idea for a missing scene. It was fun trying to figure out how Jake managed to spill enough ranch to mess up an entire drawer full of clothes.


End file.
